Natalie Yemenidjian
Swirling smoke saturates the air near the student store, the most popular smoking section at school.
I make my way to the small square marked out on the ground- a holding pen for future cancer patients.
School regulations say that you must be 20 feet away from any building to be able to smoke, but I have a gut feeling that inch-by-inch our rights are being tarnished like the enamel of our teeth.
I can’t even light up my cancer stick with my coffee at the Freudian Sip without someone asking me to put it out.
It’s a minute before my first class of the day, but like many student smokers, I’d rather be ten minutes late then go through class without my early morning cigarette.
I interrupt the classroom with my loud smokers cough.
I inhaled too fast and probably shouldn’t have had three in a row.
By now, I smell as though I lit my whole pack on fire and danced in the flames.
Anytime a smoker enters a designated smoking area, it’s as though the pangs of social interaction ease up.
Are we so socially inept that we need to cut our lives short cigarette by cigarette just to have something to talk about?
This addiction is an instant commonality that we share.
Not only are we addicted to nicotine, but also the smoking community into which we are thrust.
Asking for a light, a spare cigarette when in desperate need or even talking about the new art on the Camel packs can spark an interesting conversation with someone new.
I think it’s about time we look inward and ask ourselves why we smoke.
I know why I do it.
It’s because it looks cool to me.
Maybe it’s because I’m constantly inundated with images in the media telling me so or maybe its because it makes me look edgy.
I’ve got a lot on my mind and this cigarette is my salvation. It makes me feel like I’ve got a life faster then that of my gunpowder-lined cigarette. It makes me feel important.
It is also all a lie.
I’m actually slowly killing myself and am completely conscious of it.
The smell of sulfur from each match I struck, cements the perpetual desensitization like a tumor- the first of many that make me a future cancer patient.
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